2019 player forecasts are ready and for free download! Find sleepers and player rankings by
position. Special original stats were designed especially for fantasy
league drafting. Enjoy!!

FREE MLB Player Forecasts,
Rankings

About the Guru's MLB Player Projections,
Rankings - The spreadsheets below have 6 tabs: Definitions
(descriptions of stats), Demo (batter details), Batting forecasts,
Pitching forecasts, and Cheat Sheets for batters and pitchers. The
names of the forecasted stats have an "m" in from of them. So, the HR
forecast is mHR, etc. Players with no MLB experience do not have
forecasts.

CAUTION:
Advice from a human - DO NOT draft JP (Junk) or AP (Avoid) Pitchers,
even if the machine likes one. Those designations are very telling.

Forecasts are based on data from the last
three years, where recent years count more. Some of last years stats
are included as a reference. Some stats are our own invention
(described below). And, for pitchers, 2 and 3 year forecasts for
key stats are included, but take these with a grain of salt.

For ranking players, the mGURU stat
is the key. Alternatively for batters, use mGURUwt, which weighs
by positional scarcity. mGURU is designed to weight the
players rate of production and expected playing time to arrive at a
best rating. Since forecasting playing time is difficult (although we
are proud of the strength of this forecast), mGURU is weighted more
heavily on rate than tradition linear weights. This strategy is useful
for the goal of ranking player forecasts for simulation leagues.

mGURU is calibrated to value batters and
pitchers roughly equally, possibly giving a slight edge to pitchers. It
does not consider fielding. For batters, SB's are not as valuable in
real life (or in mGURU) as they are in rotisserie, so draft
accordingly.

mROTO is designed to provide values
for 5x5 rotisserie scoring as follows: Batting is Avg, HR, SB, RBI, R.
Pitching is ERA, W, SV, WHIP, Strike outs. mROTOwt weights values by
positional scarcity. Values are meant to be relative to each other and
provide directional guidance. Values resemble mixed leagues with a $260
budget for 12 teams.

NL players are listed at the top, AL
at the bottom. If you are playing in a mixed league, for batters: sort
by Play (descending), POS (descending), mGuru (descending); for
pitchers sort by Play (descending), POS (descending), mGURU
(descending). In the case of pitchers, notice that positions were newly
defined to distinguish between them (see below).

Players can also be sorted by rankings. Rank
is overall for batters.lrank is the league rank among either
batters or pitchers. prank is the positional rank within league
for either batters or pitchers. An overall rank across all players was
not made, but it can be infered using mGURU.

If you prefer not to consider playing time
in the rankings and want to reply soly on rate of production, we have
that too. For batters use wOBA, which is based on research by Tom Tango. For
Pitchers use mDERA, which is the ERA forecast. It relies heavily on
Voros McCracken's DIPS concept. ERAi is the indexed to league
ERA.

No minor league data was considered, so be
advised that forecasts for rookies tend to be weighted more heavily
towards league averages for players of their positions and expected
playing time than established players. Another stat Tom Tango developed
called Reliability will help you gauge this. Best of all is to look at the 3 similar players players the machine identifies.

Looking for sleepers?

Value is S=Sleeper, R=Regular,
and O=Overpriced compared to what others might expect based on last
season. If you want to know how big a sleeper or how overpriced, use gurud,
which is the difference between forecasted performance and last year
for those keys stats. The higher the number the bigger value, the lower
the number the more overpriced.

Pitchers: DIF is mDERA-ERA
(forecasted era minus last years era). Negative dif is a value pick,
positive is premium. DIF_IP3 is the change in projected IP 3
years from now minus last year.

ORIGINAL INSIGHTS

Before we get into the numbers, consider
the machine learning text. It tells us which players are the most
similar using an original approach and clusters them and gives us a
brief description of their status.

ORIGINAL BATTING STATS

The xGURU and xwOBA for
batters shows expected batting value for someone at that position and
playing time. So if you want to consider valuing SS over OF, then see
how much higher that persons mGURU is above xGURU. mGURUwt was
created to do this weighting for you.

mStarter is predicted playing time,
where Y is Starter; N is Not full time Starter or Inj risk or
Performance Risk; and B is a Bench player with fringe mlb-level quality
forecasted.

mVORP is Value (runs contributed)
Over Replacement Player. It is similar to WAR, but uses a different bar
for replacement value. For batters this is the wOBA of non-starters at
each position. The formula is (mwOBA-xwOBA)*mTAP. This is different
from mGURU, which further weights the results against players of
similar playing time. mGURU is also weighted more towards rate of
performance, so times at plate plays less of a factor (although it
still matters).

ORIGINAL PITCHING STATS

Creation of pitching positions:
SP=Starters / LP=Long Relief (Swing) / JP=Junk (or Junior) Starters /
EP=Elite Relief Pitchers / DP=Decent RP / BP=Bad RP/ AP=Avoid RP. These
assignments are critical for drafting. Seriously, do not draft AP or JP
pitchers, no matter what the machine thinks. And, LP might also stand
for "Last to
Predict" because I don't know what to do with these guys (neither do
most others, but at least Iadmit it). I don't have supporting minor
league data and LPs are players in flux. Look for bargains and young
talent there.

mSTUFF (Do NOT confuse this with
PECOTA's stuff). Having big STUFF means excellent power and control.
Its our way of measuring upside, especially for young pitchers. Find
hidden future stars! The formula is: 6*mDOM -2.67*mDERA -3*mCTL
-5*mHR9; if mSTUFF<1 then mSTUFF=1; mSTUFF=mSTUFF*mSTUFF/10;

WRIP - Since hrs allowed are more
under a pitchers control than hits allowed, a stat called wrip
was created to look like whip. Whip is (walks+hits)/ip and Wrip is
(walks+hr*10)/ip. I also like the names because a pitcher giving up
lots of hits gets "whipped", while one giving up lots of HRs gets
"wripped." Agree?

mVORP is Value (runs allowed) Over
Replacement Player at same position. It is similar to WAR, but uses a
different bar for replacement value. It is (mDERA-xDERA)*mIP. xDERA
ranges from 6 for someone who only starts to 5 for somone never starts.
Like WAR, which is based on FIP instead of ERA, this is based on mDERA,
which is much more like FIP than ERA.

traj indicates the trajectory the
pitcher is heading over the next 3 years.

Several more are borrowed from others, such
as: mCMD (9*bb/ip), mDOM (9*k/ip), mCTL (k/bb), and HR9 (9*hr/ip).

Forecasts from Past Years
These include original stats and other sabermetrics.